


fallen

by hydrospanners



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: AU, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: In another world, Nirea Velaran fails her duty as a teacher and her padawan pays the price. The Fallen!Kira AU no one asked for.





	fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr. Written for Fictober 2017.

“She won’t see reason,” the tinny voice crackles over the earpiece. “We’ve tried a dozen times and she won’t relent. We can’t wait any longer. You know what you have to do.”

Nirea Velaran gasps for breath, clutching the wound in her side as she crouches behind a computer bank. She thinks of Bengel Morr and wonders what Orgus would have done, had their positions been reversed back on Tython. She thinks of what little Jedi history she bothered to learn and wonders why they do this to themselves.

“If you go,” Kira calls from across the room. “I won’t stop you. This isn’t about you.”

It is. Rea doesn’t know how to explain that to her, not while Kira is locked firmly in the grips of this anger. This righteous fury. This is one hundred percent about Rea because Rea is the one who handed her failure after failure and never quite managed to tell her how to live with that. Rea is the one who took her to hopeless war after hopeless war, who subjected her to thousands of deaths she could do nothing about. Rea is the one who completely failed to teach her anything about how to live this horrible fucking life.

She wonders again why the Order sent  _her_. There’s this feeling in her gut that says she already knows, that says they gave up on Kira weeks ago, and now they’re just testing the woman who let her fall.

Jedi and their fucking tests.

“If they would just leave me alone,” her padawan goes on, “I could finally do something to help. I’m not like you, Rea. No one is. The rest of us can’t take all the bullshit and the chaos and turn it into miracles.”

Maybe she should go easier on herself. Maybe this is the Order’s fault. Maybe the Council should have had a little more fucking wisdom than to ask her to teach an angry, unstable teenager when Rea had always been honest about having no idea what she was doing, herself.

(The voice reminds her that was probably the point. The Council probably thought imparting her wisdom to someone else would give  _her_ a more stable center. Fucking asshats.)

“Corporations and criminals have got the Senate’s balls pinned to the wall. There’s no corner of Coruscant that's not neck-deep in corruption.”

The tinny voice in Rea’s ear repeats its instructions. It adds, a little impatiently, “If you wait much longer, Master Jedi, it will be too late.”

“As long as the Order stays on the Senate’s leash, nothing is going to change. We’re healing the symptoms but not the disease. Aren’t you tired of that? Aren’t you tired of watching innocent people die for no good reason?”

“I’m tired of watching people die,” Rea calls back. She’s never cared much about innocence or reasons. Every time she feels a light in the Force fade, it seems to carry a piece of her with it.

“Some people deserve it.”

Rea ought to say something about collateral damage. Something about political and economic collapse. Something about consequences.

Instead, she hobbles to her feet and steps away from the computer bank. Kira stands across the room, the golden blades of her saber humming in her hand. Rea swears she can almost smell it on her, the cloying too-sweet stench of death and the tangy scent of ozone. The dark side. She can feel it pulsing, tendrils of it reaching and oozing, probing all the cracks in her psyche until it finds one big enough to squeeze through, like the rats on Nar Shaddaa.

It’s worse than last time. The shape of her in the Force is bent and twisted, more distorted than ever. So much less Kira, so much more  _it_. But that was what the dark side did. It was a cancer; if you gave it an inch, it took a mile.

Krelv’an had always said the same thing about Rea.

She holds her empty hands in the air and steps forward, trying not to wince as she jostles her ribs. The static in her ear crackles expectantly.

“Are you sure this is what you want, Kira? To give the Order more power?” She thinks as hard as she can of her own years as a padawan, of the deceptions and demands and tests. Of all the things she was made to endure just to show she was strong enough to not be consumed by her own power. That she could exist without being a threat. Kira still saw the Jedi as her rescuers, but one day, she would see that the Order had taken a vulnerable, isolated girl and turned her to their own purposes.

Rea hopes she lives to see it.

“You know the things we’ve done. The things we haven’t. Is this  _really_ what you want?” She asks.

Kira’s face twists in rage–-she’s always buried her true feelings under anger, but the talons of the dark side make it so much worse-–and lightning crackles in her fingers, narrow arcs shooting out and fizzling against the floor.

Rea takes another step forward.  _Give an inch_ , she thinks, and says, “We can change things, Kira. But not like this. Chaos isn’t the change you want.”

She steps forward again. Kira’s eyes burn red with fury and the lightning arcs farther and faster, skittering closer and closer and closer to Rea’s feet. She takes another step.

“Don’t,” Kira warns, voice low and dangerous. “I’ve made up my mind, Rea. I’m doing this. You had your chance and you failed. It’s my turn now.”

The lightning fizzes and snaps in a storm around her, and Rea can feel the tug of that event horizon, of the dark side’s inescapable gravity. That word–-' _failed'-_ –bounces around in her mind, scrabbling for purchase in the tender scar tissue of her thoughts.

_Fuck off_ , Rea thinks at the darkness. She steps forward again.

“You know I can’t leave you,” she says. A bolt of power snaps against her boot. “You know I can’t hurt you.”

“Master Jedi–-” the voice in her ear warns, but Rea ignores it.

“That’s how the Jedi should be,” Kira says. Her grip on her saber is white-knuckled tense, her face taut with the strain of keeping up this emotional maelstrom. “That’s how they will be, if we just give them the chance.”

Smoke starts to rise beneath Rea’s boots. She moves forward again. Almost close enough to touch now. She reaches out with one hand. “Kira,” she pleads.

“Don’t,” Kira answers, even as her fingers flex, one hand coming free of her saber’s hilt. “I have to do this. It’s gone too far to stop now. I can  _help_. You just have to let me.”

Rea feels the tears rise in her own eyes as the lightning snaps through the protective barrier of her boots and sizzles across her skin.

“Master Jedi-–” the voice in her ear is thick with static and fear “–-now is the time. Strike now. Now!”

Kira’s hand reaches out, almost of its own accord, until the tips of her fingers just brush Nirea’s. She’s a mess of conflicting ideas and emotions, angry at her own weakness and indecision, angry at her circumstances, angry at the whole fucking galaxy. It was Rea’s job to teach her what to do with that, but Rea failed. Now the time’s come to settle up.

Her stomach twists as she takes a final step forward, directly into the maelstrom of fury and lightning. She bends it away as much as she can, but this sort of thing was never her area of expertise. Mostly, she grits her teeth through the pain and moves forward.

“Will you help me?” Kira asks, hope and aching loneliness bleeding into her voice. Rea almost can’t fathom how desperately she has failed this girl.

“I’ll always help you, kid,” she says.

Rea wraps her fingers around her padawan’s and there is just enough time to see Kira’s eyes widen with realization before Rea has her on the ground, pinned and unconscious, her lightsaber deactivated halfway across the room.

“Master Jedi,” that damn voice starts again. “The Council and the Senate came to an agreement on this. You have your orders.”

“I had a master once,” Rea says into the earpiece. “A real piece of work. Always said if you gave me an inch, I’d take a mile.” She grunts as she drags Kira’s body off the floor, hefting it onto her shoulder. “Turns out, he wasn't wrong. You tell the Senate and the Council they can eat my entire ass.”

She turns the three activation keys with a fluid push of the Force, and the countdown starts. It’ll buy her a few hours, at least, but that’s all Rea needs. Just an inch of breathing room.


End file.
